This site represents a summary of my professional work as a scholar, researcher, educator, and administrator. It includes little personal information but does chronicle my career through my engagement in writing and publishing, running faculty workshops, teaching undergraduate and graduate students, administering programs, giving conference papers and invited presentations, and participating in various service activities at the campus, regional, national, and international levels. Please use the information at the Contact link to get in touch with me if you would like more information or want to schedule a workshop or speaking event.

When I entered the field of rhetoric and composition as a graduate student in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the entire field was considered a fairly narrow area within English studies. As the field exploded into a full-fledged discipline, we have seen important subareas of scholarship and practice grow to the point where those entering the field often identify with a specific area of concentration, such as writing assessment, basic writing, advanced composition, or computers and writing. Although it has become almost impossible to keep up with all of these burgeoning subareas, I have tried diligently to maintain my interest in them while also continuing to focus on the main areas of my own expertise: writing across the curriculum (including a major devotion to faculty development); writing to learn; response to writing; writing assessment; the acquisition of literacy; and the preparation of writing teachers. I am, then, what we can now call a "generalist" in composition studies, with an abiding interest in all of it and a specific passion for several areas that drive my own work.

Chris Anson
University Distinguished Professor
Director, Campus Writing & Speaking Program
North Carolina State University

Currently: Immediate Past Chair, Conference on College Composition and Communication

What's New

My chapter in a new collec-
tion asks what good is
all our response to student writing.Read more>

A new article I just published with three colleagues argues against the use of generic, all-purpose rubrics.Read more >

Major push to implement writing across the curriculum at the University of St. Thomas... Read more >

I recently had the pleasure of reviewing Peter Elbow's new book, Vernacular Eloquence, for the WPA Journal.

At another well-organized conference of the European Writing Centers Association in July, in Frankfurt Oder, Germany (the "other" Frankfurt, on the Polish border), I gave a paper focusing on a new collaboration with our writing center.Read more >